Eye movement desensitization as a strategy to reduce trauma symptoms of terrorism acts survivors

Terrorism act is one of the worst of man-made disaster that have impact to individuals and community. Survivors of terrorist attacks suffers from chronic and acute stress symptoms. Indonesia is one of the countries that experience terrorism acts and one of the worst happened in May 2018. Terrorists attacked three cities in Indonesia, Depok – West Java, Surabaya – Sidoarjo, and Riau. The survivors range from police officers, people who are going to the church, churches’ staffs, and people passing by outside of those churches. Impacts of the terrorism acts ranging from loss of possession, relatives, and lives. Survivors from other bombing might also be triggered by the new event. Trauma recovery Indonesia delivered short intervention with 10 of the victims who shows most disturbance by the National Board of Counterterrorism (BNPT) 1 month after the event. Considering the limited time and recency of the event, team considered Eye Movement Desensitization (Francine Saphiro) as a symptom reduction strategy to help survivors who experience recent traumatic event. This presentation reported the application EMD for survivors with SUD ranging from seven to ten before the intervention. After processing four to seven target of EMD, the SUD of the survivors drop to zero to two. This shows the effectiveness of EMD to the help survivors to lower their SUD score and therefore lower their disturbing.

Conference

English

Edward Andriyanto

Andriyanto, E. (2020, January). Eye movement desensitization as a strategy to reduce trauma symptoms of terrorism acts survivor. Paper presented at the 4th EMDR Asia International Conference, Bangkok, Thailand